


Through another Life

by Sayael



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Character Death, Gen, Hazel has no clue, M/M, Origin Story, Other, Panic Attacks, Survival, Wholesome Ghost
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-24 14:32:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19725586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sayael/pseuds/Sayael
Summary: A collection of short stories from my Warlocks life as Guardian.Trying to figure out who he was, who he is and who he is gonna be...Various important moments and other snippets from his resurrection up to the current timeline.





	1. Chapter 1: Found

**Author's Note:**

> Might have to apply more warnings as the stories continue. But I hope everything is fine for now.

Day 0

It was impressive what Mother Nature was capable of without the interference of men. Over the past two millennia the human race had managed to engulf and populate almost all of Earth and there were few places that did not show any signs of their attempts at using them for something productive. Even in the deepest and coldest places were signs of human population. But after the Collapse those were abandoned and now only empty husks of buildings and broken roads remained. Places once brimming with life were now devoid of it.

So a little floating light was a new sight in the massive Taiga Forest of Russia. The largest of the five primary natural zones on the European continent, it lies south of the tundra. The little floating thing had long left the few places where humans had settled down for refuge. What it was looking for was obvious to those who knew: it was looking for its Guardian.

A few decades had passed since the Great Collapse and humanity had fallen into a so-called “Dark Age” where everyone fought each other for survival and for power. The little Ghost had thought it would find nothing out here in the vast forest, but even in the middle of nowhere there were old buildings. Scrubby shacks and simple cement buildings, all long broken down and only ruins standing. 

So when it found something that looked like it was more than just a slab of bricks in the middle of an open patch in the forest, it got curious. 

There was something like a Bunker, a round-ish building with a big door. Big enough for a transporter vehicle to fit through and it looked like the rooftop was partly caved in. The Ghost floated up, checking the building and spooking a large eagle that flew away quickly.

The flapping of wings echoed through the dead silent forest. 

“Odd…” the little Ghost mumbled to itself after it recovered from the sudden scare and floated through a small crack in the roof, entering a cold, empty hall stacked with boxes and old equipment. Next to a few broken down vehicles it discovered a crude campside with some sleeping bags. The Ghost instantly saw that it was either abandoned or its occupants had died. Second thing it was the case like it had been countless other times. As it hovered over it and scanned it he found a few skeletons. None of them however seemed to be who it was looking for. 

If it could let its shoulders drop it would. With a disappointed sigh it turned around as a low, dim light caught its attention. 

It hurried over to the source and found a console which, to his surprise, still had some power left to be operated. Curious of what it would do, the Ghost scanned and hacked the console, quickly letting its gaze float over the sign that was written above it.

“Disposal Facility,” it said in Russian. 

“Curious,” thought the Ghost and whirled around as he heard a cracking sound behind him. In the back middle of the building a hatch was opening, letting loose snow fall through. He quickly scurried over to shine a light inside a dark hole that presented a deep pit to him. At the bottom he saw something shine. 

Slowly the Ghost descended into the pit, illuminating rusted, scratched metal walls and icicles hanging from whatever edge the water could grab any hold of. Down below he found… a graveyard.  
Hundreds and hundreds of humanoid bodies stacked almost up to the ceiling of a massive hall. It was like an underground disposal site for bodies. However, they weren’t human skeleton; they were Exo. Hundreds if not thousands of broken and discarded Exo bodies filled up the massive hall. Some still in one piece, some falling apart. For someone with more consciousness the sight would have been a nightmare. Haunting to see so many bodies that had once been people just thrown away into a dark, cold hole in the middle of one of the biggest forests on earth without any chance of someone finding it. Like they were meant to be forgotten.

For the Ghost, however, it was a goldmine. A goldmine that could possibly hold what it was looking for: its Guardian! So it got to work, scanning every single body it could find. Every little piece, even if it was just a finger. The mountain of bodies however was so tall and large that its scan had difficulties penetrating it to its lower layers but the Ghost didn’t give up.

After a few days and approximately 758 scans there was a blip. It felt like a little explosion of a star inside the Ghosts body as it scanned over a beat and broken body of an Exo that was buried deep under a few meters of scrap metal and bodies. 

“Found you… I finally found you!” the Ghost gasped and expanded its shell, letting all its light wash over the figure, trying to repair anything that could be repaired and revive it.

The body laid there for a few minutes and only the dim, turquoise light of its eyes indicated that it wasn’t one of the many artificial corpses anymore. The body stayed motionless at it’s place. Only a few joints cracked as he tried to move them.

“Guardian?” Ghost nudged its hand. “Get up, Guardian. We have to get out of here.”

“Where am I?” the Exo asked. “What… who…?” with every word there rose a hint of panic in its voice. 

“We are in the Taiga, part of the Russian Tundra. You are… in a deep hole and it will surely take some time to get out of here but… you … well you can. You are alive!” the Ghost chirped. “Alive again…,” it added as the Exo turned its head to look around. 

“Who are you?” it asked.

“I am a Ghost! Your Ghost! See it as… as some kind of companion. You were dead for quite some time and I revived you.” 

There was no reply. Just an extended sigh before the Exo started to try to wiggle its body out between the lifeless limbs of the other Exo. It felt like they were grabbing at it, trying to hold it back and keep it with them in the cold, dark hole they were in. Like they were gonna miss its company.

After a few minutes it was out. Body bare and naked, panting, even if it didn’t need to but one of the few things the Exo had kept as a habit from their human life. Their human life… the Exo repeated in its head and felt another wave of panic rise up in its chest. 

“I forgot…” it mumbled out-loud.

“What?” the Ghost replied.

“I forgot… me. My life…” the Exo grabbed its head, sounding increasingly distressed. 

“Oh, that's normal. Memories is something we can’t… well, repair. It’s like a new life. A new start!” Ghost said, trying to sound cheerful but his explanation didn’t seem to soothe the Exo.

Atop the mountain of corpses, the Exo had its first of many panic attacks. 

\--------

After about an hour he had calmed down and the Ghost slowly floated closer again. 

“Let's get out of here and maybe we can find some information about you. To give you… a little something to start with. I don’t know of any Guardian who remembers his previous life but maybe… maybe you can find something?” it suggested, trying to cheer up his Guardian. The Ghost couldn’t understand why it was so important to the Exo to remember. Other Guardians didn’t seem to care and were frankly happy about a new start. A second chance!

Eventually it would find out, but it’d take some time.

He got a nod in return and both stared up towards the chute that the Ghost had previously descended. It was steep and only a few broken pieces of metal looked like they could support the Exo’s weight. It took them about 7 tries and 2 hours until they finally managed to climb out of the tomb and the Exo collapsed at the edge of the hole, panting heavily and exhausted from the ascent.

It opened its eyes as it felt a warmth wash over it and stared into the Ghost’s light. 

“I’m healing you. The light can do that,” Ghost said and the Exo tilted its head in gratitude. 

“Thank you…” he mumbled and got up, looking around. Ghost felt a little tingle as it heard those words.

In the light of day, the Exo stared down at its own body. It, he, was naked and suddenly felt a little awkward.

“Maybe you can scavenge some clothes and equipment from that campsite over there,” Ghost pointed out and floated towards it. The Exo followed and managed to scavenge some clothes and even a barely functioning weapon from the corpses. He moved the dead bodies aside, covered them in a tarp so he didn’t need to look at the skeletons and settled down in the camp. A crude fire was made, small but it offered a little bit of heat to his cold, creaking joints. 

The Ghost eventually broke the long silence that had settled over the two of them. “We should get moving soon. Trying to maybe find some civilisation?” 

“Mhm…” was the only reply it got in return and it saw that the Exo had been staring at the pit for a while. 

“Do you know what that could have been?” the Ghost finally asked and the Exo looked around, taking in the building, trying to read some of the signs.

“It looks like a disposal site and according to the bodies in that pit it was for Exo that seemed to be… of no use anymore,” the Exo replied, voice heavy with disgust and a bit of distress. Whoever he had been before, he seemed to have been not worth anything anymore. Someone seems to have seen it fit for him to be thrown into a pit and be forgotten amongst countless others like him. 

Over the next hour or so Ghost floated around the room and scanned the remaining equipment. A few lights still blinked and it tried to get it running again. Ghost scanned it over and over until he chirped up. “I found something! I think I can access its database!” 

The Exo jumped up and hurried over to its Ghost, stepping nervously from one foot to the other while it seemed to download and analyse the data. 

“It contains a list of all… uh, Exo units that were discarded here. And the reasons…Some of it is corrupted. But maybe I can filter some of the information and repair...it...” Ghost explained and then fell silent again, seemingly going through the files and descriptions.

The Exo stared at him and felt like it took ages until the Ghost stopped the scan and looked at him again.

“I think your name is Hazel,” he said.

“Hazel…” the Exo replied and the name felt familiar. 

“Hazel-5, to be precise. Well,... Hazel-6 now, I think? You were a soldier, most things are classified but the reason for your shut down was a malfunction. Let me try to decrypt some more files.” 

Hazel frowned. He didn’t feel like a soldier.

Ghost fell silent again for a short while. “You had refused to reset.”

“Reset?” Hazel asked.

“It’s an Exo thing. When a human mind is transferred into an artificial body it sometimes rejects it and goes, uhm... insane. For the lack of better words. The emotional distress can be so severe that it can cause death. If not that it can cause heavy damage to the data. Resets seem to soothe the effect and make it easier on the human consciousness to accept its artificial body. Apparently it makes it feel like being born again. But it also causes some memory loss.”

Hazel frowned a bit but it weirdly made sense to him. Having forgotten his previous life left him on the verge of panic for some reason, and yet it had felt oddly familiar. 

He scratched his neck again and again until he realized his fingers were looking for something. He felt himself pick at something on his neck, trying to pry open a little compartment. 

“What is it?” his Ghost inquired and floated up behind him. “Stop fiddling for a second… it… looks like there is a hidden compartment.”

Hazel felt the soft light wash over him again and the Ghost floated behind him for a few seconds. “Your previous self was either very smart, paranoid or just… used to forgetting things,” Ghost finally said and flew back around. “You have a little data storage back there. Whoever shut you down didn’t know it was there. It contains coordinates and a message saying only >In case of data corruption or loss<.”

Hazel stared at him like a deer in headlights.

“Shall we check where the coordinates lead to?” Ghost asked.

For the first time he saw something like a smile on Hazels face as he nodded and lifted his hand, giving the ghost a little nudge with his finger.

“Thank you, uhm,...” 

“You can give me a name. Or you can just… call me Ghost,” Ghost nudged back against the finger.

“Ghost… Ghost for now if that’s okay.” Hazel felt a little overwhelmed by this sudden and very important task.

“That is perfectly fine.” Ghost wouldn’t know that it would take several centuries for Hazel to find a suitable name for him. But that was fine. He quickly realized that giving him a proper name was becoming very important to Hazel. He didn’t mind. Not at all.

After a few more days of rest, talking and preparation they took off into the vast forest of the Russian Taiga. Towards the first of many coordinates from Hazels forgotten memories.


	2. Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hazel meets his first friend.

For the first few days it was just him, his Ghost and the occasional animal they crossed paths with.The weapon that Hazel had scavenged from the corpses in the hangar was utter trash. The aim was off and it jammed on a regular basis so soon he was using it more as a club than a firearm in the rare occasion when they got attacked by either an animal or other… people.

Not to mention that ammunition was rare as well. At first Hazel was confused about why they got attacked by others that roamed the wilds until Ghost explained what had happened over the past few centuries and how humanity was struggling to stay alive. It was more or less each on their own, fighting for survival.

It was not until the second week after his resurrection and restless wandering through the Russian Taiga when suddenly his Ghost warned him to stop and hide. He had spotted a group of individuals walking along a seemingly well-treaded path. They were covered in fur and cloaks. Their heads were adorned in pale helmets, some with long, wide horns, others plain. What puzzled Hazel the most was that they had an uncommon number of eyes and arms. The strangers were wielding two or more swords or spears and were looking out for movement with four eyes.

Certain that he was well hidden, Hazel did not move until the patrol was out of sight and the forest had fallen silent again. "What were those?" he asked his Ghost. 

"Fallen. They arrived here shortly after the Collapse..." Ghost explained. “They want to take back ‘The Great Machine’ as they call it. The Traveler. They despise humanity and everything it stands for. I’d recommend to stay out of their way for now.”

The Warlock was quiet for a while, rolling around the idea in his head that he wasn’t just alone in the forest but that basically anything was trying to kill him. He did not like that idea.

They continued walking and Hazel continued to ask his Ghost questions about what had happened while he was dead. What his Ghost had seen in his search for him and how long he had been searching.

Turns out it was a long, long time.

\---------

Hazel had been alive again for about 48 days when he found the body. It was still warm. It was still breathing and it looked at him with two pairs of scared, blue eyes. Like a trapped animal it had snarled and clawed at him when he got too close so he kept his distance.

At one point during the past weeks, they had encountered a smaller group of Fallen who tried to take Hazel out. He killed them in self-defense after they had been pursuing him for hours when he had tried to just run away. He didn’t have a choice and it was the first time his Ghost had told him to use his ‘abilities’. To call to the Void and ask it to lend him its powers. Hazel has had never felt so cold before. Not since he was dead.

“That’s a young Fallen. A Vandal, I believe,” his Ghost noted, staying out of reach of the Fallen’s claws while it scanned it. A hiss was its response. “It’s trapped under the tree. Without ether to consume it will perish soon,” Ghost added and floated back to Hazel.

The Exo stared at the Fallen for a few minutes before he took a rope from his hip and grabbed its claws before it could react. Quickly he tied them together that it couldn’t claw at him anymore.

“What are you doing?” his Ghost asked and fluttered around him nervously.

“Helping it,” Hazel just replied.

“Why? It will try to kill you!” 

“Then it’s at least a little bit of a fair fight.” With those words Hazel stepped up and dug his arms under the tree. He felt the Fallen claw at his leg with its tied hands so he stepped on the rope to hold it down. 

It cursed at him in a language he didn’t understand.

It took him a few tries to lift the tree up. It was massive and heavy, straining his joints and ‘muscles’. He could’ve sworn that he felt a few joints in his back pop. As soon as the tree moved, he stepped off the rope and the Fallen scuttled out of from under the massive trunk. The second the creature was freed, Hazel dropped the trunk and took a deep breath and rubbed his strained back.

The next thing he felt was a spear being thrust through the back of his neck. Everything went dark.

He opened his eyes again to the look of his concerned Ghost floating above him and bathing him in warm light.

“What happened?” Hazel asked, rubbing his neck and sitting up. He had been lying next to the tree.

“The second it could reach its spear it got up and stabbed you in the neck,” his Ghost replied. “I tried to warn you but that was one very quick Vandal,” he added and floated around Hazel, making sure he did his job right.

The down jacket Hazel was wearing was now ripped at the hood. It had already been in bad shape but now the Warlock feared it would be even less useful and soon fall apart. “I need to find some proper armor or something…” he noted and got back up. 

His Ghost floated around him still, then towards the ground. It noticed that the Fallen had left obvious tracks and seemed to be dragging one of his legs.

"Let's go in a different direction," Ghost suggested and gave Hazel a new marker to follow. "I came across some abandoned encampments while I was looking for you. Maybe you can scavenge some armor and weapons there. I marked the closest one for you," he added and disappeared again. 

"Let's hope they are really abandoned…" The Warlock sighed and marched onward. His neck still hurt. He hadn't really been dead, just knocked out. But it had been close and his chest felt tight just thinking about it. He had been dead for long enough and he was scared of how it might feel to die.  
Hazel knew, after his Ghost had told him, that he could be resurrected. That the Light was able to bring him back over and over again, just as long as the Ghost was still alive and Hazel had a bit of Light inside of himself.

After being told this Hazel felt weird. He couldn’t explain why but he felt like this was not… well. Not right. But also not wrong. It was something that should not be but in the circumstances it was necessary. Why him?   
Ghost told him about the Traveler. How the big, white ball in the sky chose humanity as Lightbearers to fight and protect the universe.  
Hazel could think of a million reasons why humanity might not have been a good idea. But there was an equal amount of reasons why it was one.

While wandering through the woods they often had to stop and hide. The closer they got to the camp and closer to civilisation, the more frequently they came across patrols of Fallen. Things got more dangerous.

Even if Hazel was an Exo, he needed warmth. His body might have been a machine but machines still froze and his joints got rigid in the extreme low temperatures of the night. Even the down jacket and winter clothes he had looted from the corpses at his grave didn’t help there so he carefully looked for a nook in the rocks where he could make a fire. Hopefully he wouldn’t be seen.

He didn’t hope enough.

Just a few hours after he had fallen asleep his Ghost screamed in his comms that something was coming. Before Hazel could struggle awake and reach for his broken weapon he saw a massive Fallen jump through the low flames of his campfire and pierce him with the two swords he was carrying in his two extra hands. 

The pain was indescribable. He felt the steel of one sword pierce his artificial lungs and the other one rip apart his intestines. Why he had those, he would later find out. Human-stuff, probably.

He let out a sharp breath as the Fallen Captain pushed him up against the rocks of the rockwall he had camped against. Over its shoulders he saw other Fallen, Vandals and Dregs, gather around him and his vision blurred. The Captain said something Hazel couldn’t understand. His ears were ringing with the rush of adrenaline and the panic to survive as he clawed at the Captain's arms, trying to push himself away from him into the rockwall to no avail.

The next few minutes were filled with blurs of claws, teeth and swords as the group of Fallen ripped him apart. They stayed a while after, making sure that their prey was dead. Picking and rummaging through his person, trying to loot whatever they could get while Hazel felt the cold creep into his body until he didn’t feel anything anymore.

When he came to it, he found himself floating in an empty space. Surrounded by nothing he turned his head, unsure which was up and which was down it made him sick to his stomach but he couldn’t throw up. It was cold. Not as cold as the Taiga but cold that crept into each and every atom of his being. A being that was not there because as he tried to look at his hands there was nothing. He was nothing.  
He was void. And that was when he heard something.

“Hazel, wake up! Oh, please wake up!” his Ghost begged as he floated above him.

Hazel blinked and his programmed humanity reminded him to breathe, making him gasp for air as he shot up into a sitting position.   
The panic was still fresh in his chest and he looked around for a sign of any intruders but his Ghost calmed him down.

“They left. I had to wait a few hours before I could come out and resurrect you… I’m so sorry that it took so long but I couldn’t risk them coming back,” Ghost said with a shaky voice. Hazel could hear that he was as terrified as he was.  
He could have sworn he could still taste the coppery flavor of blood in his mouth. Even if he didn’t really bleed.  
“It’s okay. I didn’t really feel any time pass,” Hazel… lied.  
He lied because he didn’t want his Ghost to know that it felt like days when he was trapped in the void. Trapped might be the wrong word because with every passing moment he felt more and more serene and his being slowly but surely be pulled apart. Becoming one and nothing with the void as it whispered sweet nothings to him.

“How far until the camp? I think last night showed that I really need some weapons…”, the Exo sighed and got up. His jacket was now only hanging from his body in ribbons and so were his clothes. His Ghost had tried to repair most of it but it seemed like he still had a few things to learn himself.

The remaining few miles were cold and long. Everytime Hazel heard the littlest noise he stopped and turned around, ready to dive into the next cover. But luckily nothing and nobody ambushed them until they reached the camp.

The camp was like a very small village. A few buildings made out of sticks and snow. Good enough to give shelter for a few weeks if you maintained them well enough. Had Hazel not known that the area was frequently patrolled by Fallen he would have stayed here but he knew he had to keep moving. 

As he rummaged through the shelters he managed to find a few pieces of armor that fit him. They weren’t in the best shape but they would do. No weapons, though. 

With a sigh he walked out of the shelter where he had found his equipment and into the center of the place where the bonfire might have been. Looking around he saw another shelter a bit out into the forest, hoping it might be a scouts nest as he wandered towards it but stopping as he heard shuffling inside.

Cautiously, he grabbed the next best stick and readied a void grenade in his other hand before he took a peek inside. 

He was greeted by the growled hiss of a Vandal that was pushing itself into the opposite corner of the shelter. The snow at its feet was tinted dark blue and there were signs that it had tried to tend to a wound. It was the Vandal that Hazel had freed from under the tree trunk a few days prior.

Part of Hazel was still scared and tense from the previous night and was pleading with his survival instinct to kick in and either run or fight for his life. But another part of Hazel remembered that the Vandal could have easily killed him like the other Fallen had. Brutal and merciless.  
But it didn’t. It just knocked him out and ran away. Maybe it couldn’t kill him because it was too weak but Hazel didn’t think that.

He let the void grenade poof out and dropped the stick. Raising both his hands, he showed he was not armed and lowered his stance into a slight crouch. Nudging just a few centimeters closer.  
The Vandal growled again, its eyes darting between Hazel and the corner next to him where its spear was leaning against the wall.  
Hazel looked at it and back to the Vandal.

“What are you doing?” Ghost whispered into the comms. Hazel didn’t reply.

“I’m… not going to hurt you.” he said as calm as possible, unsure if the Fallen could understand him or not. Ghost fell silent and sighed. 

“Use your healing rift. Maybe it can help him…” it finally suggested and Hazel blinked in confusion.  
Right, he had that. He still had to get used to his powers and he’d barely scratched the surface of what he could do.

He concentrated and made a motion with his hand as if he was blessing the ground and a white, soft light surrounded him in a small radius, barely reaching the Vandal.   
Hazel wasn’t sure if it would help him but he hoped it would. 

The Vandals eyes went wide as it tried to get away from the light but the wall of the shelter trapped it so that its feet were still inside the circle. It stopped shaking and the claws on its feet seemed to relax a little as it slowly but surely stretched out its legs, bathing them in the light.

Hazel felt his chest tingle and he couldn’t help a smile as he saw the figure in the corner relax and stretch its hands out to touch the floor where his healing rift was.

Sadly the magic disappeared as quickly as it had appeared but the effect seemed to have taken place. The Vandal had relaxed and wasn’t trying to fuse with the wall anymore. It had sat up in a more calm position and was touching its legs, checking for the injuries that were now almost completely healed.

After a moment it lifted its head and looked at Hazel with a questioning expression. Hazel didn’t know what to answer to that unsaid question.

“Is it safe here?” he asked, sitting down into a kneeling position inside the little shelter.

The Fallen tilted its head as if it was processing the question. Hazel sighed. Guess he couldn’t understand him either.  
With much gesturing and some drawings in the snow he managed to visualize his question. He had to move slow and make no sudden moves because even if the situation seemed to be calm for now, the Vandal still seemed tense.

He shrugged to the question and said something. Hazel's Ghost perked up in the comms, staying hidden as he translated what he could understand.  
“He says it seems to be safe for now. But the shelter is… bad. I think he means that it’s falling apart. But a few good sticks from the other shelters could make it good for a night.

Hazel nodded and looked at the fallen. Slowly he reached out his hand.

“Truce?” he asked, hoping the Fallen would understand.

It stared at the hand, then at him, tilting its head again. Hazel frowned. 

Ghost appeared and the Vandal jolted back.

“It’s okay!” Hazel tried to calm it. The Vandal hissed something but stopped as Ghost started to project two symbols from the Eliksni language.  
>Han< which meant something like >equally< and >Nan< that roughly translated to >secured from threat, safely<.

“My Eliksni is very limited. I’m sorry,” Ghost apologized but Hazel shook his head.

“It’s fine. I think it understands.” he replied as the Vandals eyes went wide and it nodded, reaching out one of its hands. Hazel grabbed and shook it, earning a confused look from the Fallen. But it let it happen.

The Vandals wounds weren’t still completely healed so it stayed in the shelter while Hazel gathered a few materials to secure it a bit more. At least for the following night. But this time he wouldn’t make a fire. He didn’t know if he would sleep anyways. 

The next morning however he awoke, not remembering that he had fallen asleep. He looked around and quickly realized the heavy weight against his side and the dark purple cloth around him. The Vandal was asleep, leaning against his shoulder, seemingly looking for the little warmth the Exo was giving out. Sleeping. Hazel thought that it wouldn’t hurt to close his eyes for a few more minutes.


End file.
